WASHINGTON -- U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn joined the chairmen of three House committees in a letter Friday to Obama administration officials criticizing the raid on Gibson Guitar facilities in Memphis and Nashville and calling their actions "unwise in the extreme."

The Tennessee Republican's letter went to the director of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Atty. Gen. Eric Holder and refers to "troubling reports regarding your agencies' investigation of the Gibson Guitar Corp."

Armed federal agents raided the company's Memphis manufacturing plant on Aug. 24, seizing wood, guitars and computer files. Reports indicate they were looking for ebony and rosewood used in fingerboards that might have been imported into the country from India in violation of the Lacey Act of 1900.

Blackburn and House Speaker John Boehner invited Gibson's CEO Henry Jusziewicz to be their guest in the Speaker's Box at the joint session of Congress Thursday night to call attention to the case. Boehner's office put out a statement about his guest that read in part: "Armed federal agents have twice raided Gibson Guitar's facilities. Why? Unelected Washington bureaucrats won't say."

In their letter, Blackburn and the chairmen say the deputy director general for foreign trade for India "has stated that India would allow the exports." She said Juskiewicz has said he has been importing the same woods for 17 years "without issue."

"We are deeply troubled by the suggestion that if Gibson had the skilled work done in India, using the same wood, instead of here in America, then the importation would have been legal and the Department of Justice would not have carried out this heavy-handed enforcement action," the letter writers wrote.

"If this is true, it is hard to conclude anything other than the fact that your agencies and this administration are actively pursuing regulatory and legal policies that discourage job growth in the United States and encourage shipping those very same jobs overseas, through the selective enforcement of laws enacted over one hundred years ago. This is unwise in the extreme," they wrote.

"While we respect your right to defend the signature legislative accomplishment of President McKinley, we are not so sure this was the proper instance in which to exercise that right," they wrote.

The nation's 25th president, McKinley also placed the U.S. on the gold standard and annexed Hawaii.

The other signers of the letter are Republican U.S. Reps. Fred Upton, chairman of the Energy & Commerce Committee; Cliff Stearns, chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Investigations; and Mary Bono Mack, chairman of the Committee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade.